She is also a member of the APA "Society for the Psychology of Women (Division 35)[1] which describes its mission as serving the ideological ends of feminism by means of providing "an organizational base for all feminists, women and men of all national origins, who are interested in teaching, research, or practice in the psychology of women."[6]

She is also an advisor to the post-abortion counseling group called Exhale[1] which has served 15,000 women seeking post-abortion counseling.[7]

Exhale receives funding it from two politically pro-choice donors. The Women's Foundation of California "work(s) to strengthen the capacity of reproductive health and rights organizations in California, protect existing reproductive rights, [and] promote policies that increase access to care and to abortion." The Third Wave Foundation also found the hotline met their criteria for "award[ing] grants to support the training of new abortion providers, increasing access to reproductive healthcare services…and reproductive…education."[2]

Women's eNewsletter wrote that Exhale’s "monthly budget [is] "$500…for phones, brochures and office space," but their annual operating budget is either “$200,000” or "$250,000"[3]

Major has published a number of studies on abortion with an emphasis on attributing negative psychological effects of abortion with lack of social support and stigma caused by anti-abortion protests. In violation of APA ethics rules on data sharing, however, she has refused to allow other researchers to examine her data despite accusations that she has misrepresented and selectively reported her findings.[4]

Major, B., Zubek, J. M., Cooper, M. L., Cozzarelli, C., & Richards, C. (1997). Mixed Messages: Implications of social conflict and social support within close relationships for adjustment to a stressful life event. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1349-1363.

In this study, Major reported that at one hour after their abortions, women reported feeling more relief than positive emotions, more relief than negative emotions, and more positive than negative emotions. At two years after their abortion, women continued to feel more relief than either positive or negative emotions, but during that two year period relief and positive emotions declined and negative emotions increased. At both interview times, the measure of relief was based on a single score. The measures of positive emotions was created from an average of three scores for feeling "happy", "pleased" and "satisfied." The measure of negative scores was created from an average of six negative emotions: "sad," "disappointed," "guilty," "blue," "low," and "feelings of loss." Since the averaging of six negative emotions would clearly reduce the score for the most highly rated single negative emotion, comparing a single score "relief" against an average of six different negative emotions may be misleading, since clearly effect of averaging is to reduce the score of the highest single negative emotion by averaging it down with less frequently experienced negative emotions.

Criticism of Major's Spin on Her Findings

This brings me back to the original purpose of our study which was to investigate the hypothesis [of Brenda Major] that the previously observed increased risk of depression following abortion might be inconsequential compared to equal or higher rates of depression that might be associated with giving birth to an unintended child..[6] While our original short report did not provide room for this discussion, I will offer it here.

In a follow-up study of 442 women who had abortions, researchers [Brenda Major's team] tracked depression scores using the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) one hour post-abortion, one month post-abortion, and two years post-abortion.[6][7] At the two year follow-up, approximately 50% of the women either refused to participate in the follow-up evaluation or could not be contacted. Among those who did participate in the two year post-abortion assessment, depression scores were significantly higher than their one hour post-abortion scores, though higher one hour post-abortion scores were also significantly predictive of higher depression scores two years later.[7]

In addition to these important findings, the researchers found that 24.5% of the women remaining in their sample at the two-year followup had scores above the cutoff for clinical depression on the BSI depression scale.[7]

Curiously, rather than registering alarm, the researchers’ erroneously asserted that the depression rate detected in their study was only slightly over that of American women in general by reference to a study of national prevalence conducted by Blazer, Kessler, McGonagle, and Swartz,[8] which indicated a 20% lifetime prevalence rate of major depression among women 15-35 years of age. The reason this was assertion was erroneous is that the researchers mistakenly compared their scores for depression in the most recent month to Blazer’s findings regarding lifetime prevalence rates. Fortunately, Blazer’s group also reported the prevalence of current (30 day) major depression for females aged 15-24 and 25-34, as 8.2% and 4.3% respectively.[8] Thus, when the proper comparison is made for most recent month depression rates, these follow-up abortion studies[6][7] [by Brenda Major] actually found that depression rates two years after abortion were 3 to 5 times higher among women who have had an abortion compared to the general population of similarly aged women.

In my opinion, this finding that one-fourth of women two years after their abortion had high depression scores should have motivated the researchers to encourage more detailed pre-abortion screening and post-abortion counseling. But curiously, the authors appeared to generally dismiss the importance of their own findings on the basis of the hypothesis that giving birth to an unwanted pregnancy would likely incur equal or greater psychological price,[6] a theme echoed by Schmiege and Russo.[9] This is an extremely important hypothesis, but it is also a hypothesis, which up to that point, had never been tested. In the most recent, comprehensive review of the literature on emotional reactions to abortion and future research priorities,[10] the absence of studies examining psychological adjustment following an unintended pregnancy using control groups (comparing those who abort to those who carry to term) is identified as a major shortcoming of the existing literature. Our original study appears to be the first to employ this very appropriate control group.[11] We have continued to pursue this direction with two other studies that have compared the psychological wellbeing of women who carry unintended pregnancies to term with women who have abortions: one finding higher risk of long-term generalized anxiety disorder among women who abort[12] and the other finding higher rates of substance abuse.[13]

Brenda Major believes the testimonies of thousands of women who attributed their depression, anxiety, or other issues related to abortion can and should be dismissed. This is like saying women who have been raped can't be trusted when they say their psychiatric symptoms are due to their rapes...after all, it could be because they suffered bad potty training at the hands of an unloving mother, and they just wrongly attribute it to rape. See Letters to APA Regarding Task Force on Abortion for an excellent response to this favorite abortion trauma denier's argument.

Here Brenda Major explaining in her own words why we shouldn't trust women's own explanations for post-abortion grief and trauma:

First, Reardon falsely implies that “a causal link between abortion and depression is strongly supported [by the self-attribution of women who have been interviewed about their psychological reactions to abortion and also by clinical experience of counselors who have successfully treated post-abortion depression],” and cites studies of women who have been interviewed about their psychological reactions to abortion to support his claim. The studies he cites, however, are not based on representative samples of women who have had abortions, but rather on biased samples of women who have self-identified as feeling depressed resulting from abortion. Responses of these women cannot be generalized to the general population of women who have abortions. Even if these samples were representative, however, responses to these interviews would not establish a causal link between abortion and depression. Strong evidence exists that people can perceive a causal connection between events in their lives when none in fact exists. The infamous witchcraft trials of Salem, MA, in which young women came to believe that physical symptoms they were experiencing were caused by witchcraft, provide a compelling example of this fallacy.[14] (emphasis added)

She doesn't make a distinction between people blaming witches for their nightmares and people blaming their abortions. Major seems to think that both bad witches and bad abortions are figments of one's imagination. Using the same reasoning, the rapist can insist that his victim actually enjoyed it and is just trying to blame her other mental problems on him because she can't prove the causal connection between the rape and her problems. For the PAS-deniers, this is a great dodge since you can never prove a causal connection between any experience and one's psychological well being.

Furthermore, you will note that Major never acknowledges that it is up to those who favor abortion to demonstrate a causal connection between abortion and it's hoped for benefits. In fact, other than the vaguely defined feeling of "relief," few if any benefits have been found to be even statistically associated with abortion, much less proven to be benefits 'caused' by abortion.

In addition, Major's lack of concern for accuracy is demonstrated by her very inaccurate description of the studies cited by Reardon in regard to the quote she truncated and criticized. Not even one of the four citations he used were employed "samples of women who have self-identified as feeling depressed resulting from abortion." The Rue study, for example, was based on questionnaires given to women with any history of pregnancy loss and did not employ without self-identification of negative reactions to abortion as part of the selection process nor did it even examine depression.[15] This lack of precision is typical of idealogues for whom the idea is more important than the facts. By ignoring Reardon's citations, and instead attacking the existence of other evidence (self-reports), she is attacking a straw man of her own creation in an effort to promote the ideological idea that the 'only' evidence of negative reactions post-abortions is from self-reports.

Refusal to Share Data Violates APA Ethics Rules and May Conceal Truth

The refusal to share raw data regarding global warming, and the the subsequent "loss" of that data[16][17][18] points to the problem of how politically motivated scientists may be tempted to protect their interpretation of data by hiding the data from examination by others.

Brenda Major's has similarly refused to share data from her studies even when the data was requested by the Department of Health and Human Services.[8]The withholding of data from other researchers is a violation of APA ethics rule 8.14.[9][10][11][12][13]

Methodological Problems - Comparing Relief to Negative Feelings

Reports of "relief" following abortion are inconsistent and vague as relief can mean anything. Relief that the medical procedure is over. Relief that one's boyfriend is no longer badgering her to have an abortion. Relief that she survived and is not bleeding. Relief that no one in her family knows.

In short, "relief" is not necessarily a sign of an substantial improvement in mental health or well being, much less evidence that there is not some co-concurrent harm. The survivor of a plane crash may, for example, feel both relief and pain, including PTSD, shock and internal bleeding.

How meaningful is it to compare a woman's feelings of relief to have the abortion behind her [19] with feelings of loss, depression, and guilt? Yet that is exactly what has been done by numerous researchers, without any clarification or qualification regarding what kinds of relief women are feeling.

For example, in one widely cited study, Brenda Major[20] reported that at one hour after their abortions, women reported feeling more relief than positive emotions, more relief than negative emotions, and more positive than negative emotions. Yet when a minority of the women were interviewed again, two years after their abortion, the levels of relief had declined as had the average score of positive emotions. Meanwhile, negative emotions had significantly increased.

But Major dismisses the decline in relief and rise in negative emotions with the claim that feelings of relief were still more common than the average of negative emotions. But again, the question asking women to rank feelings of relief on a scale of 1 to 5 does not tell us much about what that relief really means...much less how it differs from women who are relieved that their abortion is over and done with two years ago compared to the women who are relieved that they do not have a child to raise or to the women who are relieved that no one knows about their abortion or those who are relieved that they finally received some post-abortion counseling to help heal from negative feelings.

How is one to really interpret the average score on a scale of 1-5 for relief of 3.53 for 386 women one hour after their abortions and an average of 3.11 for two years later? How many of the women are even relieved about the same things. Indeed, on a scale of 1 to 5, a score around 3 is neutral, indicating very little if any relief.

Yet Major's study is frequently cited as proof that negative emotions after abortion are less common than relief. But this claim is actually very suspect.

Major's study actually compares the single score for relief to a composite average of six scores for negative emotions: "sad," "disappointed," "guilty," "blue," "low," and "feelings of loss." This comparing of a single measure to averaged measures can be very deceiving.

Consider a single woman who answers a neutral 3 for "relief" and "5" for guilty and "1" for the other five negative variables. This would produce an just 1.6 for negative feelings compared to 3 for relief, when in fact an examination of her strongest reaction to all seven variables clearly indicates that guilt is her strongest emotion. Indeed, a 5 for guilt and a 5 for sad would still give only a 2.3, still well below a neutral relief score.

The selection of negative emotions used by Major is also problematic. A scale for negative emotions should include the most commonly reported negative emotions of women. These most commonly reported negative emotions should have been identified from prior studies, particularly interviews or open-ended questionnaires where women describe their negative feelings in their own words.

If this had been done, the variable "disappointed" would not have been included in Major's list of six negative emotions. In prior interview based studies with women, there is no indication that the emotion of feeling "disappointed" commonly occurs. Guilt, sadness, loss, depression, yes. But disappointed? No.

Similarly, the decision to include "sad," "blue," and "low," as three separate variables is also odd. Admittedly, all three are terms used to describe feelings of depression. But many people consider them at least closely related if not synonymous. The problem, from a study design perspective, is that asking women to rate each of three nearly synonymous feelings separately is likely to suggest that women should try to tease out which of these three they felt the most, therefore rating one of these "blue," for example, higher and the other two "sad" or "low" lower in order to better clarify which specific flavor of depressive feelings she was experiencing. By contrast, if Major had chosen to use a single word, or if she had even shown all three words "sad, blue, or low" as a single variable to inquire about any of these commonly used words for depressive feelings, that single score would likely have been higher than the average of these these three words when treated as separate and distinct feelings.

Priscilla Coleman's Response

On Sunday November 7th, the Washington Post published an opinion by Dr.
Brenda Major titled "The Big Lie about Abortion and Mental Health." I would like to offer
another perspective on dishonesty permeating the scientific study and dissemination
of information pertaining to abortion and mental health.

Dr. Major is absolutely correct; an informed choice regarding abortion must
be based on accurate information. For abortion providers to offer an
unbiased and valid synopsis of the scientific literature on increased risks
of abortion, the information must include depression, substance abuse, and
anxiety disorders, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as well
as suicide ideation and behaviors. Over 30 studies have been published in
just the last 5 years and they add to a body of literature comprised of
hundreds of studies published in major medicine and psychology journals
throughout the world. The list is provided below and the conscientious
reader is encouraged to check the studies out. No lies...just
scientifically derived information that individual academics, several major
professional organizations, and abortion providers have done their best to
hide and distort in recent years.

Like Brenda Major, I too am a tenured, full professor at a well-respected
U.S. University and I too have published peer-reviewed scientific articles
in reputable journals. In fact, my publication record far exceeds that of
Dr. Major on the topic of abortion and mental health. I am not alone in my
opinion, which has been voiced by prominent researchers in Great Britain,
Norway, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the U.S., and elsewhere. As a
group of researchers, who in 2008 had published nearly 50 peer-reviewed
articles indicating abortion is associated with negative psychological
outcomes, 6 colleagues and I sent a petition letter to the American
Psychological Association (APA) criticizing their methods and conclusions
as described in their Task Force Report on Abortion and Mental Health.

The opinion piece by Brenda Major following on the heels of the highly
biased APA report is just the latest effort to divert attention from a
tidal wave of sound published data on the emotional consequences of
abortion. The evidence is accumulating despite socio-political agendas to
keep the truth from the academic journals and ultimately from women to
insure that the big business of abortion continues unimpeded. The
literature now echoes the voices of millions of women for whom abortion was
not a liberating, health promoting choice. A conservative estimate from the
best available data is 20 to 30 percent of women who undergo an abortion
will experience serious and/or prolonged negative consequences.

Any interpretation of the available research that does not acknowledge the
strong evidence now available in the professional literature represents a
conscious choice to ignore basic principles of scientific integrity. The
human fallout to such a choice by the APA and like-minded colleagues is
misinformed professionals, millions of women struggling in isolation to
make sense of a past abortion, thousands who will seek an abortion today
without the benefit of known risks, and millions who will make this often
life altering decision tomorrow without the basic right of informed
consent, which is routinely extended for all other elective surgeries in
the U.S. In publishing Major's opinion without soliciting other voices on
the topic, the Washington Post has perpetuated a serious injustice.

↑ 8.08.1Blazer DG, Kessler RC, McGonagle KA, Swartz MS. The prevalence and distribution of major depression in a national community sample: The National Comorbidity Survey. American Journal of Psychiatry. 1994; 151, 979-986. Full Copy - Free